


Introductions

by drashizu



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Gen, I was supposed to write slash for this prompt but this came out instead, Snapshot of how Kamet and Nahuseresh might have met, Sounis and Eddis are mentioned vaguely, you might spot Nahuseresh's older brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 17:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7181408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drashizu/pseuds/drashizu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kamet is summoned before the man who will become his master - and Nahuseresh isn't particularly impressed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Introductions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Minutia_R](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minutia_R/gifts).



He was a scribe, and trained in mathematics, classical languages, astronomy, and cartography, so Kamet expected that whoever his next master was would be wealthy—perhaps even a member of court.

His former master had been. The aging Imperial Astronomer, only loosely involved in the imperial service to which he had been appointed decades ago, had died last week with no familial heir. His few worldly belongings—a small apartment’s worth of wobble-jointed antique furniture and drab, dated clothes, a library’s worth of scrolls and folios and loose-leaf scrawlings which had lived in the apartment with him, and a foreign-born slave who kept his effects in order, his notes readable, and his accounts from falling too much in arrears—were now in the possession of the imperial household.

It had taken most of the week for the new Imperial Astronomer’s assistants to catalogue the library, box it up, and cart it out, and the rest of yesterday afternoon for the much faster staff working for the Master of the Imperial Household to repossess the chairs and tables and carpets and strip the room down to its gray plaster walls. In another time, the apartment might have been refurbished and turned over to its former occupant’s successor. In another time, Kamet might have stayed with the apartment, and gone on doing exactly the same job for a new master, or, if the new resident had no need of Kamet, he might have been sent to the palace library or to one of the archival offices to serve the imperial household as a scribe.

But this odd, short wing of the palace just north of the kitchens was old and dusty and had lower ceilings and smaller windows than anyone wanted nowadays, and was several decades overdue for a renovation. Now that the hidebound old astronomer was gone, there was no one left living here, and there were already a few assistants to the palace architects wandering through and taking measurements while a slave with a tablet and stylus trailed them keeping notes.

What that meant was that there was no new resident, and no pressing need for a slave whose whole world for the last three years had revolved around this apartment and the route between it and the kitchens. No one was thinking of Kamet. He stayed in the apartment as he always had while the library was emptied, expecting someone to tell him to move to the palace slave quarters, but no one did. When the library was empty, he sat in a corner of the front room like an extraneous side table, watching the furniture disappear and sketching on the back of a leaf of paper that the new astronomer’s assistants didn’t want. The other side had some incorrect calculations of a translation through spherical coordinates on it. Eventually, even his stool had to go.

Then the whole apartment was empty, and Kamet wondered if he had, in fact, been entirely forgotten.

“Are you the old man’s slave?”

Kamet turned from his perusal of the dust bunnies on the floor and, when he saw the newcomer, bowed. It was not a slave on the palace cleaning staff, but a court official, dressed well and scented and oiled like all the Medes of court were. A minor court official, Kamet supposed, as the scent reached him. It was one of the cheap ones. Which did not surprise him in the least—this was, after all, someone tasked with collecting the unneeded slave of a deceased astronomer from the unfashionable end of the palace complex.

“Come with me,” the official said, beckoning in such a way that his robe sleeve billowed imperiously. It was a studied gesture. “And leave that trash behind.”

Kamet did so. It hadn’t been a particularly good sketch, anyway. He already had the linen bag containing his few clothes and personal items on his shoulder. They weren’t belongings, precisely, because he was a slave and had no such thing these days, but the Master of the Imperial Household neither wanted nor needed a slave’s plain garments and a cracked enamel case of worn pens and brushes and inkpots. He’d had to keep them on his person while the movers were here; the one time he’d set the bag down in a corner, one of the other slaves had almost gathered it up and thrown it away.

A slave did not speak until spoken to, as Kamet knew by now, or at least not to a minor court official with better things to do with his time. They went through the palace, one turn and then another, by ways Kamet knew well enough: they were headed past the kitchens to the slave barracks, the gated compound within sight and smell of the stables where the hundreds of slaves who worked in the palace lived. So Kamet was going to be put to some sort of palace work after all. He asked no questions of the minor court official.

The man passed him off to the overseer of the barracks outside the latter’s office in the courtyard just past the gate. Kamet made his final bow and began to turn away, already forgetting the minor court official as he himself would surely be forgotten. But a voice snapped, “Don’t take too long. Come back here immediately once you’re clean and presentable,” and Kamet turned around again, startled. By no means did the official sound happy to have to wait even that long.

“Yes, sir,” Kamet said automatically, and the overseer tugged him away and, once they were out of sight, passed him off to yet another underling.

That person, an older woman dressed in the white linen shift of a slave, led him down a shadowy corridor of bare stone, open to the sky, that ran between two separate wings of the slave barracks. It was cool here, as though the taller buildings of the palace on all sides never let direct sunlight touch these roofs. At the end of the alley was a turn to the right, and then an open arch with a raised threshold let them into an even dimmer room.

Judging by the dampness in the air, this would be the communal baths.

Medean baths were elaborate, in Kamet’s experience, whole buildings divided into dressing rooms and steam rooms and rooms for washing, massaging, tea-drinking, and even napping, luxuriously appointed and often very expensive to use. Those sorts of baths were not typically used by slaves. Beyond the anteroom, this bath had a broad, low-ceilinged dressing room with stools scattered about and shelves on the walls. No one was in it now; it was well after the midday rest, and every slave with a job was busy doing it. A single archway led on from here, meaning this bathhouse had only one room for washing, and was not arranged in a circle like the wealthier baths that led their patrons on a mazelike tour of every amenity the bathhouse had to offer between entry and exit. Since there was only one dressing room, he also supposed this was the men’s bath, and the women’s would be somewhere else.

“Undress and give me your clothes,” said the old woman.

“Will I not need them?” Kamet asked, confused.

“Not a dirty shift, you won’t. You’re meant to be presentable.”

He lifted the bag from his shoulder and said, “I have clean ones—”

She took it from him. “I’ll keep this.”

“I—” Kamet intended to protest, strongly, but nothing in that bag was his in strict terms. Nothing in the world was. Surely he had some standing against a fellow slave, though! “Those are—”

“You’ll get them back if he doesn’t want you. If he does want you, you won’t need them. But you can’t carry a smelly old sack into a high lord’s presence.”

He? He, who? If _who_ wanted him? And what was this about a high lord—? But all Kamet said was, “It's not _smelly_ ,” and obediently began to strip down.

“Hmph,” said the old slave, and took his meager bag back into the anteroom.

“I keep my things clean!”

She ignored him. She was probably delivering his things to some sort of storeroom. He hoped that was where they were going, at least. He hoped he wouldn’t return to find the pens and ink mysteriously missing. Or his comb.

When he had gotten his clothes and sandals off, and unwound the braid from his hair, he paced into the next room and found a small washroom, exactly as he’d expected.

Medean bathing practices had been opaque to Kamet at one time, and they still seemed convolute, when surely even the most fastidious of men could wash himself perfectly well in a tub of warm water. But immersion was unclean, as he had learned since then; one washed with running water, if one were civilized, and the Medes were surely that. So a Medean bath, even one in a slave barracks, had only running water.

Kamet found soap and a clean rag on a shelf in the corner, wet the rag under a stream of warm water that trickled quietly down a stone aqueduct along the righthand wall, and lathered himself up. He used a bucket to douse himself off, then soaped his hair—there was no shampoo or hair oil, so he’d just have to make do—and rinsed it and did his best at detangling.

When he was as clean as he was going to be, he took himself to the other side of the room, where another aqueduct ran near ice-cold, and gave himself a last sluicing-off that raised goose-bumps on his arms and legs.

After that he hurried back to the changing room. The old slave had taken his clothes, right down to the sandals with blackened imprints in the shape of his feet. In their place were new ones, much nicer than anything he was used to, shiny gold leather and an elaborate webbing of straps. He suspected he wouldn’t get to keep them. There were clothes, too, still undyed linen, as every slave in the imperial household wore, but the texture was smooth, soft, with hardly any nubs, and the fabric had been bleached to a more perfect white than the raw linen of his own wardrobe. Instead of a shift or a tunic, he had a knee-length robe with a shirt and pants to go beneath it. The shirt tucked into the pants, and a wide, pleated sash covered his waist. There was nothing to tie back his hair with.

He waited for the slave woman to return so he could point out the omission to her.

Instead, a new slave—how many people had to be involved in this process?—swept into the room with a pair of shears and a razor.

“Haircut,” was the only word, as the young man wrapped a towel around Kamet’s shoulders to protect his new clothes, and Kamet supposed a trim would be nice, until the first hank of hair came off and it was as long as his hand.

“This is too much!”

“Slaves in the inner palace don’t have long hair,” the young man said with a sniff.

“I’m not going to—”

“Do as you’re told,” the young man said, this time with a sigh, and Kamet remembered the first rule of being a slave, and shut his mouth and sat back down on the stool. His hair, straight and sleek and black as a crow’s wings, descended to the floor around his stool. No one had ever made him cut his hair before. He tried not to mind.

The shave was better—he didn’t wear a beard anyway—and then the old woman returned with a vial of rosewater and dabbed it on his jaw and neck as aftershave. That was _very_ nice. He hadn’t looked or felt or smelled this good in a long time, and he was comfortable and almost happy, even with the weight at the back of his head gone, as he was led back out of the slave barracks and into the courtyard where the minor court official sat on a chair the overseer had graciously provided.

“Good enough,” said the minor court official, and swept off with a languid gesture that suggested _follow_. Kamet ran his hand down the fuzz on the back of his head as they walked.

 

***

 

In the center of the Imperial Palace, nestled between the wing inhabited by the highest nobles in the empire and the long series of audience halls and throne rooms that faced the vast outer gates, lay the walled-in royal compound. Within, every wall was faced in gold, every door was tall enough to ride an elephant through, and every second room was a courtyard full of exotic plants and creatures and fountains running day and night with rosewater. Or so Kamet had heard. Even without setting foot in the royal compound, he suspected some of the speculation was exaggerated, if only because if _every_ door was elephant-sized, the servants must sound like elephants coming and going, too.

He still wasn’t expecting to get the chance to actually _see_ it.

They had begun on the far northerly side of the palace premises, where magnificence gave way to utility, so they entered the palace proper by a servants’ way on the ground floor of the nobles’ wing. Kamet wouldn’t have known it for a lordly residence by its ground floor; the palace was built on a grade, south to north, with the great throne room at the highest point, so you climbed stairs to reach it from all sides, and the living spaces behind it were four or five stories off the ground, their roofs and windows visible from a distance on the palace grounds. The halls underneath, hidden, were devoted to the exclusive use of servants.

As Kamet and the minor court official went deeper, windows vanished in favor of oil lamps, and the air cooled and began to smell a bit stuffy. It wasn’t quiet: palace staff passed on all sides, cleaners and launderers and tray-bearers from the kitchens in abundance with lightfooted messengers slaloming between them and a handful of guards in uniform going to or from their duty posts.

The plain yellow flagstones and plaster walls never changed, so Kamet wasn’t sure where in the nobles’ wing they were—not that he’d ever been here anyway—until they came to a break in the corridor where two guards flanked a heavy double door.

The door stood open, but the attitude of the guards did not invite entry. On the other side was another stretch of identical yellow flagstone, but that side was empty, and Kamet was surprised to find when he glanced around that they were alone in the hallway on this side, too.

The minor court official walked on, chin lifted importantly.

The guards eyed him as if they knew better, but whatever their opinion of him, they saw fit to let him pass, not needing to ask his business. Kamet followed silently and tried not to be caught looking at them.

Only a few strides later, as he leaned to look around the minor court official’s shoulder and saw the staircase rising out of sight some distance ahead, it occurred to Kamet that they had just passed the checkpoint blocking entry into the _royal compound_. Even the servant passages here were protected.

Up they went, and up again, and the stairs ended at the corner of a V of hallways, window-lined, giving them the choice of left or right. They were aboveground again, but still in service areas. The minor court official went left.

More stairs. There were small flights of them everywhere, positioned at intervals in the hall opposite the windows, between squat doors leading to what looked like storerooms. If they were directly beneath the living quarters, those stairs would provide access to individual rooms on the floor above.

Several turns later, they chose a staircase and climbed it.

“—never deign to listen to the wisdom of our ambassador’s advice,” a man was saying, in a lazy, confident tone, when they stepped quietly through a door hidden in an alcove behind a tapestry. “But he has an heir who by all accounts will need help should he ever take the throne, and lots of it. In the event the king’s proposals to his neighboring queen continue to be rejected, and the heir is not replaced, we should be ready to try that angle, too. I have already proposed a plan to gain the heir’s trust to Uncle, but—”

“But let me guess,” said another voice, just a bit deeper, and just as selfsure. “He cut you off in the middle of a sentence.”

“No . . .” said the first speaker, drawn-out, and sounding frustrated. “But he did tell me I should put the ‘contrivance’ to the general and see if he thought it was ‘seaworthy’—his words—”

The other man scoffed. “The old crow has no imagination anymore.”

“We will be much better served when someone with a bolder perspective controls the legions,” said the first man, in a tone gone silky, but also quiet—as if saying something he shouldn’t.

Kamet couldn’t see the other man’s reaction, but he didn’t sound displeased. “What did I tell you?”

“Exactly that,” the first man agreed.

“So,” said the deeper voice. “Send _me_ your proposal. Troop list too, if you’ve got one. It might take a year or two, but we can get a new ambassador positioned in the court to play off the young prince’s insecurities.”

“Actually, I was thinking something more along the lines of a staged kidnapping,” said the first man lightly, and the second man laughed.

“ _That_ , I can’t wait to read.”

Then there was the sound of footsteps on carpet, a swinging door, and a latchclick.

Now that they could step forward without interrupting, the minor court official seemed suddenly just as cowed as Kamet felt. _Who_ were they meeting?

“Enter,” called the voice, now brusque, with none of the silky warmth it had shown the departed companion. Spurred, the court official stepped out from behind the tapestry, and Kamet followed.

He knew his place. Not just a slave, but a foreign one, a lowly one from the outer palace: he kept his eyes cast down. He had an impression of a vast, airy space full of light and rich brown wood, but the only clear image was of the thick-tufted gold and indigo carpet covering the tiles on the floor.

Ahead, on a chair with low-set, crossing legs, reclined a man in rich red trousers and soft satin shoes. He made a motion of the hand—a reach to the side, from which followed the click of delicate porcelain returning to the inlaid surface of a side table. Kamet’s peripheral vision was not up to the task of showing him this man’s face.

“That took longer than expected,” said the voice.

“My deepest apologies, my lord,” said the minor court official with a second bow. Kamet had already lowered his head so far a bow would be superfluous, but he wondered—here in the royal family’s inner chambers, before a man who could only be among the foremost lord of the land, if he was determining the disposition of foreign ambassadors—should he kneel? “He wasn’t fit for your presence, when I found him.”

“I meant the old man died a week ago,” the lord said, “and I’m only seeing his slave today, after sending for him myself. When I asked to have all the competent scribes in the palace brought before me, I didn’t just mean the five who’ve served my family since I was ten years old. I already _know_ about them.”

Sarcastic, all of this was, but calmly so, without an audible hint of actual anger. Kamet began to think this man chastised his inferiors out of habit more than anything else.

Again, the court official bowed. “I can only apologize most profusely, most earnestly, my lord.”

“Never mind about that,” the lord said. “You know my requirements.”

“Yes, my lord.” Another heartfelt obeisance.

Then, to Kamet’s sudden and unpleasant surprise, the minor court official backed himself out of the room.

The door behind the tapestry shut.

Kamet’s stomach clenched.

“Hmm,” said the lord, and with a scrape of satin on carpet pushed himself to his feet.

Circling, he inspected Kamet. He still had no face.

“You _were_ the old astronomer’s, yes?”

Kamet modulated his voice so that it was as soft as could be, but still carried clearly. “Yes, my lord.”

“You served him personally? And no one else?”

“For six years, my lord, yes.”

“Who before that?”

“A trader between the empire and my homeland, my lord.”

“Yes, I can see,” the lord said, referring to the tone of Kamet’s skin and, if he could see them, the shape of his eyes. “Foreign-born, then.”

It did not have the tone of a question. Kamet stayed silent.

“You read and write our tongue, I assume.”

That did, so Kamet said, “Fluently, my lord.”

“Mathematics?”

“I am familiar, my lord.”

“Just familiar?”

“I had the late astronomer’s training personally, my lord.” And exceeded his algebraic competence rather quickly. After that, it had been books. Kamet didn’t say so.

The lord was silent for several moments. “You know, my proper title is Your Eminence.”

Kamet wracked his brain, trying to figure out what that meant about this man’s position in court, and didn’t know. The minor court official hadn’t called him that, either. Kamet didn’t get the impression that was due to familiarity. “I apologize, Your Eminence.”

The lord paused his circling and looked at Kamet dead-on. Nerve-wracked, Kamet wanted more than anything to glance up at his face and get some sense of how this interview was going, but he couldn’t risk it.

“I lied,” said the lord eventually. “Your Eminence is the proper address for a high priest. Do you know my real title?”

“No . . . my lord.”

“Do you even know who I am?”

“No, my lord.”

“So you’re not familiar with the court, despite living here for six years.”

“No, my lord.”

Another, longer pause.

“Good.”

That did it. He sounded genuinely pleased, as if having finally found something he’d spent weeks looking for. Kamet had not failed or offended him by being unused to high court rules.

So, if he had that as an excuse, he might as well satisfy his curiosity. He lifted his head.

Young, but not as young as Kamet. Old enough to wear that lordly authority decently well. Selfsure—an arrogant lift of the brows, no surprise. Attractive features, for a Mede. Dark hair, dark beard, both sleek with oil and groomed conservatively, from what Kamet had seen of the court: the hair combed back, the beard trimmed fairly short and separated to the sides, leaving a split in the center. Eyes like dark amber.

He raised his brows higher when he saw Kamet looking.

Again, not displeased. But not happy, either. Better make the best of it.

“What _shall_ I call you, my lord?”

Kamet was watching those eyes closely, and saw them make an expressive shift, widening in surprise and then narrowing, creasing at the sides, in—not quite pleasure— _interest_. The eyebrows came down.

“That will do,” he said, “for now.” A hint of a smirk, one-sided, not for Kamet’s benefit: “I don’t know if you’re satisfactory yet.”

Kamet straightened out of his bow. “Will you put me to the test, my lord?”

Now, suddenly, a sharp frown. “What are you angling for?”

Kamet caught his breath. The rebuke had been harsh, like the slap of a switch. “I was impertinent, my lord. I’m sorry.”

“Answer the question!”

What was he _angling_ for? Kamet wasn’t _angling_ for anything, except, now, not to get sent from a high lord’s presence straight to a flogging. He was angling for a curt dismissal and nothing else. He had hesitated too long, and he still didn’t have a good answer. The lord made a small sound of anger, a sharp breath, and stepped back a pace.

Had he been angling for anything before that mistake?

Yes. He had been trying to impress this man.

No sense of caution, or common sense. He would berate himself for that, later, when he had time.

“I was trying to make a good impression, my lord. I went too far.”

“Why?” He wasn’t getting any happier. He sounded sarcastic again.

“My lord?”

“You obviously want me to pick you. So tell me why. I hope you can come up with a good reason.”

“Pick me . . . for what, my lord?”

The lord made an impatient, meaningless gesture. “I need a secretary. It’s common knowledge. I’ve seen every scribe in the palace at this point, starting with the least likely and ending with the less likely, and you’re the last. I’ve put off making a decision until I could see you. Clearly. If you didn’t know it before, surely you’ve figured it out by now.” Unless Kamet was dense as well as foolish, the implication was.

Kamet didn’t know what to make of that. He risked a question. “Why did you have to wait for the astronomer’s death, my lord? If I may ask.”

“The man was old, but he wasn’t an idiot. He’d have sold your loyalty, if he’d known I was taking you. And, sick as he was, he could have hung on for another year or two, couldn’t he? And I’d have had to deal with _that_ hovering over my shoulder, too.”

This was almost making sense to Kamet, except that he didn’t know how his own loyalty fit into it or how it could have been exchanged without his knowledge. But the lord waved his hand again, this time dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. Either you’re playing dumb, in which case I can’t take you, or you actually _are_ , in which case I don’t want you. You’ll be put to work in the tax offices, I expect. Mathematician that you are.”

That last was not just sarcastic, it was _nasty_. Kamet didn’t think he’d let callous words hurt him in several years, but he was wounded by these. Perhaps because they struck one of the things he let himself be proud of.

“Yes, my lord,” he said automatically. “I understand.” His acquiescence was not necessary, nor strictly proper, and he worried as soon as he’d said it that the angry highborn man standing before him would take it as further impertinence, but the only response was a dismissive shrug.

There was a bell pull in the corner of the room. It summoned not the minor court official but a slave, even more finely dressed than Kamet and meticulous in manner, to whom the lord said, “Take this one to the chief overseer of slaves and see he’s put to some useful work. Then go find that wretched clerk who’s run off and send him back to me. Tell him I will have further need of his services.”

The slave did no more than bow, wordless, and then stared at Kamet to compel him into motion—which stare became a glare as Kamet stayed put.

The lord glance aside in the process of resuming his seat and realized Kamet was still there. “What? Was even that opaque to you?”

“If you aren’t going to take me, who’s left to you? Will you take one of the scribes you’ve already rejected?”

The slave over the lord’s shoulder had gone exceptionally blank-faced.

“I am sure your master would like to know, whoever he is,” the lord said waspishly.

“You need someone who won’t spy on you,” Kamet said in belated realization, “and you thought I would have been sufficiently isolated from the court that I would have no other connections besides the Imperial Astronomer.”

“I am beginning to think I was right about that, but not, unfortunately, to your credit. You are quite the naïf, aren’t you?”

Kamet bowed. “Very much so, my lord.” He straightened. “But naïveté can be fixed, and it is not the same as unintelligence. If I might be excused for arguing my own case—”

“Says who?”

He didn’t bat an eye, recognizing the hostile interjection now as a defensive one, probably reflexive. “I can do anything you could possibly need of a secretary, and more. My grasp of mathematics exceeds my late master’s. I speak four languages and would be pleased to learn more. I can read a map and plot a course, given a compass and an accurate clock; my note-taking is fast and my penmanship is excellent. I can memorize poetry, so I’m sure I can also memorize speeches, or supply manifests, or—”

“Stop.”

Kamet stopped.

“Who said I wanted a list of your uncorroborated skills?”

“If you can do better among the scribes you’ve already interviewed, and have no qualms about letting them see and hear your business, then, I suppose, I truly have no skills of use to you, my lord.” Kamet bowed, deeply and gravely.

The lord, who name and rank Kamet still didn’t know, did not stare at him; he gazed at the tip of one of his shoes, legs crossed at the ankle, and reached for the porcelain cup he’d left on the table. “You want to make an impression on me by speaking this way. A good one, you said. Why?” He laughed unexpectedly, but it wasn’t a kind laugh. “You must really not want to be a tax clerk.”

“At this point,” Kamet said, growing somewhat surly, “I just want to clear my name. And I would be _pleased_ to be a tax clerk.”

“Ah?” The lord raised both brows, sounding combative. “Perhaps I should have you sent to the salt mines.”

Kamet could sense a sea change when one happened. “In the Mede Empire,” he said, bringing his pedantic side to the forefront, “most salt is extracted from salterns on the Middle Sea. It isn’t very difficult work.”

“So recommend something more to my liking.”

“Perhaps a tannery, my lord. I’ve heard it’s rather unpleasant pickling leather. Or a weapons foundry—I’m not strong enough for that work, I expect. But if you insist on something underground, the saltpeter mines in the desert would do well enough.”

In his ornate low seat, the lord quietly sipped from his cup. His eyes had that interested look back. Before he could say anything, Kamet lowered his head and approached as close as he dared.

“My lord, I am good at all those things I mentioned. I spent the last six years recopying notes and keeping an old man’s accounts. If needed, I could do that for the rest of my life. But it’s very—” He thought, at the last moment, that this might not be the right tack to take. But it was too late now.

“Boring?” asked the lord, amused.

“I would like the chance to use my skills,” Kamet said humbly, and bowed more deeply and waited.

“I suppose,” the decider of his fate said pensively, “I can always have you replaced, if you’re a bother.”

“I suppose that means yes?” Kamet asked pertly, without looking up.

“Impudence suits no slave,” the lord said sternly.

“I shall endeavor to suit you very well.”

A lazy wave of the hand. “Probationary service until I decide you aren’t worthless to me.”

“What shall my first task be?”

“Go find that court clerk and tell him Prince Nahuseresh wants to speak to him.”

“Shall I be ominous?”

Nahuseresh laughed, surprised and, now, pleased. “I shall judge your success by his expression when I see him.”

Kamet lifted his head, smiled—the other slave had removed herself without a sound—and left immediately to find her and ask the minor court official’s name.

He thought this was going to be fun.


End file.
